Gosling Two

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

EPILOGUE

Special Thanks

To my wife, Patti, for patience and proof reading, and Judy Kelly and Rod Jermain for valuable resource material. I owe a great deal to Maralys Wills’ critique group, a bottomless well of guidance from other writers who were generous with their time and talent. But to Michele Lack I owe the most, for her unflagging encouragement and assistance.

GOSLING TWO

The Prologue

Viva 26 de Julio!

In nineteen sixty-one the Cold War glowed red-hot. The world’s spotlight fell on a captured U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, and his trial in Moscow. Cuba, after fighting a bloody revolution to oust Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar, a corrupt US puppet dictator, declared itself Marxist. April 17, 1961, the world witnessed the tragic debacle of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In August, an ugly wall partitioned East and West Berlin. In the fall, Russia detonated its first hydrogen bomb, with a yield of fifty mega-tons.

In the early fifties, American leadership still smarted from a Russian nose-twisting in the Berlin Airlift. They nervously watched developments in Europe, and the frustrating stagnation of peace talks in Korea, and the furious rantings of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Unfortunately, US intelligence paid little attention to incursions of organized crime into Cuban society and economics or the unscrupulous labor practices of American-owned fruit and sugar companies in Cuba and Central America.

American intelligence organizations were at last compelled to follow the activities of Fidel Castro, an upstart Havana attorney, the son of an exiled Spanish rebel. An inspirational leader, he challenged the status quo by arming rebels to oppose Batista.

Jose Ramon Fernandez and Fidel Castro had launched their crusade on 26 July 1953. They were soon arrested by the secret police and charged with plotting against the Batista regime.

After their release from prison in 1955, the revolution resumed and Fernandez became Castro’s most valuable asset. In Europe, he shopped for arms and established contact with several nations involved with the manufacture and marketing of war materials Castro needed to pursue more intense and determined revolution.

Fernandez bought shiploads of Belgian FAL light automatic weapons, ammunition, hand grenades, and surplus American-made 105 howitzers and 81 mm mortars from Italy. Even Israel’s Prime Minister, Golda Meir, wined and dined Fernandez, but ultimately he rejected Israel’s proposed arms package. His most important acquisition was the goodwill and generosity of the USSR.

In the late spring of 1960, Castro declared himself a socialist and formal Cuban-American relations suffered a permanent breach. Three months later, the first shipments of arms from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union filled warehouses at Havana docks.

It had been to Castro’s advantage to let America’s political leaders indulge their Euro-centric paranoia, declaring himself a Marxist only after the revolution was all but totally won. American intelligence incorrectly assumed that all of Cuba’s rebels were communist. From the start, ousting Batista was the primary, if not the singular objective of most Cuban rebels. At the close of the revolution, there were ten different factions which had assisted in the removal of Batista from power but opposed the leftist ambitions inherited from Fidel Castro’s tough and obstinate Spanish father.

Disorganized and poorly led, non-leftist and stubbornly anti-Castro groups fought to reverse Cuba’s course toward Marxism. With little possibility to consolidate resources and coordinate their efforts, these groups were eventually isolated and captured or, more often than not, simply wiped out. The summer of 1965 saw the last and largest anti-Communist enclave neutralized deep in the Escambray Mountains of central Cuba.

American intelligence groups had struggled with distractions for years, but Russia’s launching of Sputnik, the first orbiting artificial satellite in October of nineteen fifty-seven, sparked hysteria.. Also advances in technology had made nuclear warhead delivery systems more reliable and increased their range. American leaders firmly believed that Russia had sprinted ahead in the arms/technology race.

A fearful America struggled to catch up. Terms such as inter-continental ballistic missile, DEW line, massive retaliation, kill radius and fall-out became household words. Bomb shelters were included as options in new home plans.

Forget Flower Children and Woodstock. This was the real nineteen-sixties.

CHAPTER ONE

In the dead vast and middle of the night.

Shakespeare

Eventually, good luck always runs out. In mid June, 1961, Eddy Rush and I struggled with our assignment of stringing field telephone wire across a marsh near the Rio Sucio estuary on the Pacific side of Panama, down coast of the canal.

Sssssh . . .  POP!

Eddy and I froze. The noise and brilliant illumination of a parachute flare startled and confused us.

Jimmy! Who the hell’s playing with fireworks?

It came from the other side of the swamp, close to where we came in, I whispered, pointing toward a column of white smoke glowing above the brilliant light. I had never seen flares in our inventory. I doubted it could be one of our guys.

Above our corner of the Panamanian jungle, a tiny errant sun burned on a stainless steel leader. Particles of retina-searing white fire drifted over our tracks. It swayed in the faint breeze and slowly descended, filling our edge of the triple canopy rainforest with a harsh, surrealistic light.

A panicky voice shouted only a few yards away. Javier! ¿Que coños esta pasando?

In a clearing to our left, we saw two figures tumble from hammocks. Like us, they tried to comprehend a grotesque world etched in Prussian blue shadows and blinding light.

Jimmy! You take the one on the right! Eddy shouted and threw himself on the other Cuban sentry. I stood there, one hand filled with a roll of electrician’s tape and the other held a pair of wire cutters. Get him! Eddy shouted as my man, shielding his eyes from the glare, stumbled toward an M-1 carbine propped against the tree at the foot of his hammock.

Eddy hammered his sentry with heavy blows and I heard the sickening smack of fists on flesh and bone. I stood transfixed as the other sentry reached for the carbine. The paralysis of surprise and fear fell away and I threw the heavy steel wire cutters, striking him behind his right ear. He recoiled in pain and I hit him with a body block coach Rowden would have been proud of, carrying us several yards, but the weapon was in his hands.

How the fuck did I get here?

* * * *

My name is James Brendan Donlin, and I’ve been looking over my shoulder for nearly fifty years.

It’s unlikely that anyone can pinpoint the exact moment when they no longer view the world through the eyes of simple and idealistic youth. We cling to concepts of fair play as long as the unfolding events of history will allow, but ultimately witness the extinction of the flawless morality of childhood, the robust faith in our taught, preached, and coached perceptions of right and wrong. Now, across the dinner table, a television screen shows us decency and justice sacrificed to political expediency, in living color with a running commentary. Every night. Details at eleven.

In the end, adolescent illusions are betrayed by chance acquaintances. The demands and compromises of adulthood drag us into a dirty, cynical and complicated reality. My venture into the larger world began at 6 am, on a warm morning in early May, nineteen sixty-one.

CHAPTER TWO

It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested.

Abraham Lincoln

At eight o’clock on a muggy morning in early May, 1961, both civilian and military men assembled in building number T-23. The aging two-story wood structure, formerly barracks, stood behind a triple curtain of chain link fences topped with razor wire. It was one of eleven two-story whitewashed converted barracks that housed the temporary quarters of the Caribbean and Central American section of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Shiny-faced Ivy League recruits with short hair and long resumés quick-stepped at the elbows of their mentors, older men with gray hair or balding heads, and tired, jaded expressions. The thump and rattle of folding chairs echoed in the dark interior as they randomly took their seats. Uniformed men of all branches of the armed services, men of quick minds and fearsome resources occupied the first two rows. Representatives from a variety of intelligence-gathering entities filled in behind them. Nervously, they awaited the first in a series of briefings on a very disturbing fragment of news to be detailed by a newcomer to the NSA.

A small and nervous speaker, Dr. Sidney Borden, leaned against a too-tall oak podium and tiptoed to speak into the microphone. Dr. Borden held credentials impressive enough to attract the attention of a think-tank centered at a prestigious eastern university, and win an appointment to the Caribbean and Central American section currently undergoing a drastic restructuring. The shake-up was so extreme that one of its members, while busily packing personal items into a cardboard box, declared, The damned section isn’t being reorganized, it’s being turned into sausage.

A helpful figure walked from the wings to the podium and adjusted the mike to a lower position. Dr. Borden nodded his thanks and his heels settled to the floor.

Dr. Borden’s recent papers established his credentials and brought him to the attention of the intelligence community. His grave shortcomming was a near-suicidal recklessness of political toes. In his recently published book, An Overview of the History of American Intelligence Service From the Civil War to the Present, he gave General Curtis LeMay credit for developing an efficient aerial intelligence-gathering service where none had existed before, did it well, and without spending enough money to draw attention to his project.

As Dr. Borden introduced himself in academic term in a voice that would have induced a coma in most college sophmores, two naval officers sat near the front and to the right, open briefcases on their knees, reading a high-lighted excerpt from Borden’s book.

Half a dozen B47 bombers were overhauled and redesignated RB47E, to be used as extreme altitude photo-reconnaissance platforms. Without the knowledge or consent of the president, they left contrails high over Russia, well above what was believed to be the effective altitude of anti-aircraft measures of the day.

While we can appreciate LeMay’s good intentions, impressive security management and resourcefulness, this unquestionably patriotic but arrogant act fell between insubordination and treasonous provocation.

Be that as it may, photos of military bases confirmed what LeMay and other experts of the day suspected; Russian deployment of offensive hardware, even if not technically superior, far surpassed the US.

Commander Lon Crane, an officer in the Naval Security Group, nudged Lieutenant Commander Ashley Knox. What kind of grades, did you make in history at Annapolis? he asked in a raspy whisper.

Brilliant, Knox replied. But never mind the history lesson. The good doctor has stated information in writing that would have gotten him lynched a year ago. LeMay still carries a lot of weight in Washington.

Crane smiled as he remembered a late evening at The Sopwith Club and a conversation with several of his Air Force counterparts. They had served with Le May and endured months of terror. The General had a beautiful daughter who considered any base her private hunting preserve. Obliging officers were then caught between lust and LeMay. The sweet young thing yanked their chains mercilessly. If they complained that a proposed date conflicted with duty roster she suggested that she speak to Daddy and get it changed. She usually got what she wanted.

Borden’s intro was brief, his voice reverberating in the dim room, and he leapt feet first into the crux of the current turmoil. With no allegiance to any political party or intel group, bare facts flew like schrapnel.

Dismissing his introduction with a wave of the hand, Borden launched into a tirade over the current intelligence blunders, starting with the Powers incident. By the late fifties a second-generation spy plane, now with the knowledge and consent of President Eisenhower, carried a new camera developed by Edwin Herbert Land. Gary Powers carried one of these cameras on his U-2 when he was shot down May first of last year. Ivan’s improved technologies proved an unpleasant surprise for heads of the CIA’s U-2 program, demonstrating that not all intel can be provided by high altitude photography. Dr. Borden, aware that each group present knew fragments of what he presented also knew that most never knew all the details, never got the full picture. In his classes he used the example of a hawk watching a snake pass through tall grass… it could see enough to know its a snake but never saw the entire snake. He also knew his name would emblazen smoldering memos and reports within the hour, licked his fingers and turned a page in his notes.

"After a long series of such encroachments into Russian air space, several of LeMay’s planes were lost with full crews, more than matching the losses of KGB infiltrations right here in our own country. These episodes have have kept us teetering on the brink of all-out war for over a decade. Of course, I refer most recently to Rudolph Abel and his all too successful network of boots-on-the-ground agents which we are still dismantling. I offer up this little history lesson because the events I’ve mentioned are the latest links in a chain connecting us to the current issue I will present today; the latest Russian response to a future burdened with the most potentially disasterous possiblities imaginable.

The on-going Powers trial is only a minor disaster. Borden paused for effect.

April seventeenth, nineteen sixty-one, only two weeks ago, we witnessed a major disaster, both militarily and politically: the miserable fiasco called the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Borden’s eyes darted nervously about the room at the thirty-four men who sat with pens poised over note pads, breathing now a forgotten function.

"Launched from Tuxpan in eastern Mexico, anti-Communist, anti-Castro Cubans, and friends, launched a massive invasion effort on the south coast of Cuba.

With the expectation of air support, Cuban patriots rushed onto Playa Larga, code-named Red Beach, and Playa Giron, code-named Blue Beach. There had been perhaps, a modest possibility of success with air cover, but without it, no chance whatsoever, Dr. Borden said through clenched teeth, obviously contemptuous of men in the audience he blamed for the failure through sloppy planning and for failing to convince President Kennedy of the necessity of air support from Guantanamo.

Knox and Crane glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. Borden is a mad-man stomping through a minefield! Knox muttered.

Committed to disavowing involvement, our newly sworn-in President Kennedy signed approval to launch the invasion. Crane could hear career analysts sucking air as Borden put his shiny-new career on the line by placing the blame for the Bay of Pigs squarely where it belonged. "But for reasons no sane person could comprehend, he chose to ignore the persistent arguments from his military advisors and intelligence teams. I think we all know some of those men are in this room even as I speak. President Kennedy refused air support. His reasons were, in part, based on his knowledge that a dozen WWII surplus B26s and B25s were already committed to the mission, supposedly piloted by American-trained Cuban exiles. In reality, American super-patriots flew half of these planes. They were young men from Air National Guard units in Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. Someone close to Kennedy thought this would be enough.

Tagically, it wasn’t. The lack of modern fighters from the Navy base at Guantánamo, and our failure to discover just how large Castro’s secret air force had become assured the dismal tragedy that resulted."

The room filled with grumblings and epithets. Borden paused, waiting for the audience to quiet down. He glared at men he felt cared more about their jobs than their country, and with a vicious sweep of his hand turned another page. Chairs rattled and clattered as several men rose and left.

The current, ill-conceived White House cover-up will crumble, gentlemen, Borden continued in a voice quavering in rage. It will crumble under the flood of detailed reports poring in from reputable news agencies. Initial accounts were rebuked, deemed as unreliable, content and origins unsubstantiated. International reporting agencies have been painted with a red brush, as communist sympathizers. It won’t stick. Several foreign embassies and Bay of Pigs survivors have given accounts to international news agencies with good credentials and a long history of reliability, and they are sharing film and copy with the world.

Aides from the back of the room pushed carts loaded with manila envelopes down the aisle. They counted the occupants in each row and passed out packets of aerial photos.

This morning, newspapers carried a release from government sources blaming a ‘renegade component within the Central Intelligence Agency.’ I was informed a few minutes ago that Allen Dulles met with the president yesterday and was asked to step down as head of the CIA.

Thirty voices hummed with the shocking reminder that their exclusive niches were not protected from the vagaries of politics.

Our concern now is to answer this one question; given that Castro and a communist Cuba will be with us for a while, what does Russia hope to gain by developing closer ties with Cuba? Dr. Borden paused and peered at his audience.

Leverage, gentlemen, leverage, he answered. In Turkey our air bases and Jupiter missile installations array thousands of warheads against every significant Russian target. Cuba can provide the ground for Russia to establish a mirror image of the American nuclear threat and impose a similar level of fear on this country.

Voices rumbled in the darkened room, some expressing doubts that the Russians would dare push their luck that far. Others nodded complete agreement with Dr. Borden’s assessment. There is good reason to believe the Russians are already laying the groundwork to provide nuclear armament to Cuba, and eventually the rest of Central and South America, Borden announced bluntly. That brings us to today’s topic. Last February, a huge barge came through the Panama Canal, another is on its way, and a third is under construction in Japan.

An hour later, Lon Crane stared blankly into his opened leather briefcase at the close of the session. The aerial recon photos could be wrong, he thought. The inspectors signed off on the first barge as a floating miniature refinery. The Cubans might have discovered oil reserves and negotiated for a cracking plant. From the air, one twelve hundred barrel tank can look a lot like another.

The other members of the briefing session stood and conversed in low tones. Nervous hands shuffled copies of reports and eight by ten glossies of high altitude views of a Russian naval base on the Kamchatka Peninsula where the barge had been outfitted with the tanks and machinery it required. There were also photos of four Cuban harbors, including the harbor of Mariel, just outside Havana.

Dr. Borden perspired heavily in the center of a small group of analysts who physically towered over him, but he stood his ground on the report’s accuracy and the intelligence supporting it. Crane heard him loudly rebuff arguments against the report being outragously inconsistent with current political views. Borden shook his fist in the air in frustration. I’m not a politician and neither are you. This is hard intelligence and the politicians will just have to deal with it. I pity the idiot who puts his neck on the line by trying to twist this into something less or different than it is!

It’s much too early to hit the panic button, Lon Crane thought to himself, and closed the lid to his briefcase. Then why do I have this knot in the pit of my stomach?

Commander Ashley Knox walked beside Crane as they approached the coal mine at Langley later that afternoon. Knox and Crane were Navy Intelligence’s liaison with the CIA, and best friends. What are the Dutch doing, getting mixed up with the goddamned Russians and Cubans? They’re NATO members, f’Chris’sakes! It doesn’t make sense! Knox objected as they passed through the first security checkpoint.

There’s no solid evidence they are, Crane fired back. This new barge may be carrying papers from New Zealand, for all we know. Forged papers are nothing new in this game. And the Japanese will work for anyone who flashes a bankroll. That doesn’t mean they’re doing any more than chasing a profit. Hell, next time, maybe the Russians will have a barge built at the Electric Boat Works at Groton, Connecticut.

What does all this have to do with Cuba? Knox pressed. They haven’t developed much beyond sugar cane, bananas, and cigars. But if they’ve found oil, why shouldn’t they refine their own gasoline?

Be careful what you eat, even if it’s served up on a silver plate. You’re far too eager to buy the obvious, Ash, Crane warned. Nobody wants this to be a false alarm more than I do, but until we know better, we have to assume the barge is what the big boys think it is; a miniaturized rocket fuel plant.

There’s no way we’d let the Cubans develop an offensive missile system. The Monroe Doctrine . . . . An armed guard at the second security station interrupted the conversation to check the photos on the clearance tags hanging from their pocket flaps.

It doesn’t apply, Crane interrupted. Cuba is a recognized Western Hemisphere nation. If we could prove the Russians are colonizing Cuba, or exerting significant influence, or some form of coercion, that’s another matter.

But this pair of barges, Knox objected. They could be anything; Borden said so himself.

"What if they’re not just anything, Crane asked. The Watane Kai Shipyard in Yokohama is building a third barge right now, again for a fictitious Dutch client. I’ll bet your paycheck it will make a trip to the Petropavlovsk Naval Base, just like the first two."

Borden says, Knox persisted, the Russians know about our fly-overs, and this second barge is playing a cat-and-mouse game, something their predecessor didn’t bother about. Why? If the first barge made it through with papers for a refinery, why wouldn’t it still work?

That alone justifies a certain level of suspicion, Crane said, and where the hell do they expect to hide something that big?

They paused at the third and last checkpoint. Fly-overs of Cuba confirmed that the first barge, which had papers sending it to the Dutch Antilles, never arrived there. We now know it, and that has made us suspicious. And they know we’ll inspect the second barge more closely. What did you do to miss this?

I had a nature call. That bozo from the Defense Mapping Agency tried to take my seat. Remember?

Oh yes. The guy with the Jersey accent, Crane recalled. Well, instead, the barge’s cargo was deposited ashore in Cuba, and the barge itself became a floating warehouse in Kingston, Jamaica. It’s still there. The tanks removed from the barge look similar to tanks at installations in central Russia already known to be a rocket fuel plant. Check Borden’s photos.

They think this because of the high altitude photos of storage tanks? How can they be sure? Knox asked.

That’s the problem; they’re not sure. The placement of pipes, valves, and pump stations strongly suggest it is. The photos and Borden’s team of analysts made the big boys nervous, Crane said, smiling. They’re still smarting over an embarrassingly poor intel performance in Cuba. Did you catch what he said about Cuba as a distribution center?

Damned straight! Commander Knox snapped. We’re supposed to find some way to absolutely confirm these suspicions . . . or disprove them.

If it is a rocket fuel plant, Crane said, we could also determine the kind of rocket fuel it’s intended to produce. That would tell us what kind of missile, and that tells us warhead capability, range, and potential targets.

Commander Knox shrugged. This is either a case of horrific paranoia or a declaration of war. But which?

Turning Cuba into a distribution center for Russian-made missiles and warheads would directly threaten two thirds of the US. I agree. That sounds like a declaration of war, Crane said. If they’re installed at the southern end of Argentina or Chile, already struggling with their own Red factions, they could also close the Drake Passage and the Strait of Magellan. Cuban missiles could control Caribbean approaches to the Panama Canal. All sea routes for surface vessels could be closed. South America would be a wedge between our Atlantic and Pacific fleets. A handful of Russian subs between Australia and Indonesia and between Australia and Antarctica would deny passage between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. We’d be boxed in. You’re right, Ash. We would never stand for that.

They paused to scan the last two pages of the report that outlined assignments for the men who attended the briefing session. We’re at bat on this end, Crane said. We’ve pulled an old-timer out of retirement for this one. Right now, he’s bringing his brother’s body back from Europe. Wilson Donahue says he needs something to occupy his time.

CHAPTER THREE

He must needs go whom the devil doth drive.

John Heywood

In the sultry early morning of June 13, 1961, on the west coast of Panama, in the center of Golfo de San Miguel, my raft, Gosling Two, lagged behind the other ten-man Zodiacs. Half an hour earlier, we had departed from the intersection of the line of demarcation, the line that marks the entrance into the gulf and Pollux Intercept, our primary navigation reference line arbitrarily drawn from our camp to the center of the demarcation line. Captain Abbott had ordered us to run nav exercises and monitor radio communications from the guias, our guides on loan from the Panamanian navy and natives to our area of operations.

We returned to Base T an hour after dawn. Our group of eight hard-asses, listed as independent contractors in DC, was greeted by the usual grumblings of Buryl Gates, our ninth member, a surly demolitions specialist who had been assigned radio watch for the night. We found breakfast waiting for us. The mess tent was squared away, the coffee was strong and hot and the powdered eggs weren’t scorched. Someone even made biscuits. Woods, Collins and Nash, three of the old duffers in the photo team, hovered about like schoolboys, waiting for one of us to tell them they were great cooks. Bishop broke first. Whether a sincere act of decency or an attempt to just keep the peace, I could only guess, but in fact didn’t much care. Of course, we were glad for a good meal, and the geezers did seem to want to please us now. I caught myself wondering what changed their attitudes.

Please pass those wonderful biscuits, Mr. Nash, I said.

From my corner of the the mess table, I watched Loomer re-establish himself as an authority instead of a den mother. Dr. Roche was easily his greatest challenge.

I don’t want to talk to you, Donny. And keep away from me with that ax handle, Roche grumbled.

It’s the handle of a pick, Bernie, much heavier than an axe handle. Loomer pressed Roche against the wall of rations that divided the mess area from the living quarters of Captain Abbott, our commander, and Rubio Williams, second in command. Loomer held the balk of hickory threateningly in his right hand. "This is in the area of contract, Bernie, and you don’t have to talk to me, but like it or not, you will listen to me." Loomer picked up Roche’s left elbow and roughly directed him to the empty palapa for a brief, private conversation. When they returned to the mess tent for their food trays, Loomer wore a cordial smile, but Roche presented a scowl, and seethed with anger and defiance.

Seeing Loomer knock Roche into Gosling One the night before demonstrated to the others something was wrong. This didn’t fit with Woods’ account of the mission or our role as chauffeurs. And Dr. Loomer had his hackles up over another stupid remark by Nash. By the time Loomer reamed them out and explained the mission again, they were very upset.

This is far riskier than . . . er . . . what you presented to us at Alamo . . . Alamogordo, Donny, Woods whined.

Again Dr. Donald Loomer told his photographic team about the nine of us and our training and what we were doing out on the water at night. They were shocked. Bernie actually . . . er . . . struck one of them, Woods stammered.

Compañeros coming in, Bishop shouted, pointing at the lone battered aluminum fishing boat, trailing a plume of white exhaust. Looks like Jorge and Pello.

We gathered at the beach